The researchers took 50 cats from shelters and peoples homes and deprived them of food, human contact, scent and toys for a few hours.

They then introduced them to stimuli within these four categories to see what they chose.

Most cats chose human socialisation over any of the other categories.

The authors of the study wrote: “While it has been suggested that cat sociality exists on a continuum, perhaps skewed toward independency, we have found that 50% of cats tested preferred interaction with the social stimulus even though they had a direct choice between social interaction with a human and their other most preferred stimuli from the three other stimulus categories.”